Thursday, April 07, 2005

Priorities

I sit here with the cat on my lap purring away, and I find myself thinking about priorities. Happiness - yes. Getting aggrevated by pointless little problems - no. Being relaxed - yes. Being stressed - never. Yet I find myself being much more prone to being stressed these days. Why is this? What has changed in my life to make me worry about things that I know are unimportant? The answer is that nothing has changed, only my perception of things. Now I am starting to see consequences and deadlines looming all about me. Now they are getting closer, and I don't like it. Soon I will have to grow up, be responsible, make my own way and make everyone proud. I guess for the first time I am concerned about failing and letting people down. This is not something to which I have ever had to experience before. Even with the minimum of effort I have managed to sail through 21 years of education. Now at the end of it all I find myself thinking maybe I should have paid more attention. Maybe I could have learnt something of the people teaching me. Well, in a word, bugger.However, contrary to popular opinion, I am not a miserable person. While hindsight is a wonderful thing, it does not change the past. It just makes you a bit more careful in the future. You could say a bit older and wiser. In truth it is a less youthful, less carefree. Anyway, I am getting side tracked. As I was saying, the past is all done. To be happy, you have to look forward. Otherwise you are caught in the trap of regets over things done/not done or by memories of things that were better than the actual events. So what to look forward to? A long and happy life? Doing something worthwhile? Ruling the world with my iron fist from my moon base? A nice cup of coffee and a kitkat? It doesn't matter. Something to look forward to, no matter how small, make the world a nicer place. And little things can make all the difference.I am currently looking forward to a nie cup of coffee. I think I may go and realise that dream. Little things...